


Ashes

by sassafrasx



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassafrasx/pseuds/sassafrasx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’s not the sort to last long in this world.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/gifts).



> Dear Ils_mutant: it has been a long, long time since I jetko'd, I must admit, but it was really wonderful to immerse myself in these two again. I've never written anything quite like this before, so it's a bit of an experiment/departure for me, but when I sat down to write for you this is the idea that called to me, so I followed my gut and I truly do hope you enjoy it!

You are: a prince without a crown, a land, set loose upon the world and cast into the depths of ignominy, until there is nothing left to hold you down, no place to call home and no one who wants you there. You. Alone in a maelstrom, so better batten down the hatches now. You'll be lost.

You _are_ lost, have been lost as long as you can remember. Even in the relative safety of simpler times, a mother to call your own, you were lost. Disregarded. Contemptible in your father's eyes. Everyone's eyes. Weak, always weak. Too much compassion wrecked your heart and now even the Spirits turn from you. Leave you to crawl along in the muck with only your uncle to know who you are. No one else ever can.

New life among these heathens, left to rot in the pits of Ba Sing Se. You shouldn't live like this. _No one should live like this_ , you know, but can never say, it's the pity in your heart that only ever tore you down. Now you'll always be weak like your uncle, and, oh, how much you resent him, the weakness that spreads like sickness into your soul too.

But you love him, more than anything, would make the entire world burn if anything were to ever happen to him, in a way you never could for your own redemption. The Avatar.

And then _he_ is there, on the ferry, dripping words like he holds the keys to the stars. Like the secrets to salvation are within reach if you’ll only listen, listen to all he says and follow along like a good little boy. Assured. Jet’s all right, Jet will sort everything out now, you hear?

And you shouldn’t. He might be as mud-brown as the earth from which he comes, but he’s a fire set alight on the world. He’ll burn fast, burn brighter, and you know, you know he will, you can recognize this as surely as your own fate because his righteous anger would make your people proud.

Before they kill him, anyway.

He’s not the sort to last long in this world. You _know_ but it’s your weak heart that wants to follow, bask in someone else’s sun, someone who sees your worth and wants your time. Wants to curl his hand around your wrist. A crooked smile. Shift things inside you you can’t remember having. You’ve never been afforded the luxury of that. Not in a life on a boat desperately seeking a port it can never find. Never home, only the endless wanderings of the exiled, with nothing but a few gruff old hands and eyes to glare disinterestedly. As ashamed and forgotten as you.

But not him. _No_ , not him. There is nothing disinterested in the slip of quiet feet around you, pushy arms and knowing smirks. Promises and a cause. A kindred soul to moor you down.

Because you know the wrath of those cracked under tyranny, left to wilt and die, razed from existence by those who would watch you burn.

( _Never mind that you would be the tyrant, that you would try so hard. You’re not, never can be, it’s not in your cards, the hand you were dealt was too fragile to hold your fractured, bleeding heart together. But you would try, in your father’s image, your shining goal at the top of the hill._

 _Never mind that._ )

Failing, falling, feet first, tumbling down you go. After him. After everything. After nothing at all. It hardly matters now, not when his voice slides down your spine and grips you as firmly as if it were his hands themselves. Steel traps snapped shut.

But eagerly you go, which you hate, despise. Put up a fuss and refuse to fall in line, because you might be a castaway, a long forgotten hand-me-down your family will no longer lay claim to, but you’re not a follower. You’re supposed to lead.

Not that anyone ever followed. Just another mark on the board, a slash in the column of why you’re a failure of a son, and no longer anyone’s son at all.

But you follow Jet, in the end. Everyone follows Jet and you hate some more, even as you let him pull you into a darkened corner and take hot, harsh kisses from your lips, an inferno raging between you both that speaks to your soul, unlocks your secrets and self-deceptions.

Nearly torch the ferry to cinders that night, the taste of the captain’s food still on your lips, liberation on Jet’s tongue, and strong, sure hands that awaken your blood and leave you quaking, fingers that promise even more. Later. A new life, a start, in Ba Sing Se.

You lie on the deck that night, the stars drawn nearer, the constellations lit up like they have some new meaning at your fingertips, if you’d only just reach a little harder, try a little more. But the bitter irony clogs the back of your throat, turns fledgling hope and desire to ashes, ghosts of emotions you have yet to feel. Emotions you don’t deserve.

Because you _are_ fire, flames flow through your bones, your very being, as certain as the sun rises every day, and he would shove mud-baked earth down your throat until you choked, smothered out, nothing but a shell, if he knew. If he knew the truth…

That’s a reckoning the sun and the moon are not prepared to see.

* 

And it’s your uncle and his _damned tea_ that sets it off, in the end. Of course it is. You’re still falling, crossed swords, crossed lies, lives that should have never touched.

But they did. _You_ did. You touched and now it’s all aflame, immolating before your eyes, a boy on a fresh start carted off in front of you. A beautiful boy you wanted to like, to like you in return, to wrap his sweet assurances around you and maybe, maybe, find a way to be more like him, stronger in all the ways you wish you were yourself.

Now he’s gone too. Just like everything else you touch, burnt to ashes.


End file.
